Histoire de la digestion

Digesting the Medical Past

A history of medicine blog about the history of diet, nutrition, stomachs and digestion. 

By Ian Miller, University College Dublin.

http://digestingthemedicalpast.blogspot.ca/

Digesting the Medical Past: An Introduction

This post is intended as a brief introduction into my research into the history of stomachs, digestion, diet and nutrition, as well as my interests in the history of medicine in Ireland and Britain. It is intended to open up questions which I will address in my regular future posts.

Historicising the Stomach

The stomach is an organ of historical significance. The organ’s past is the subject of my monograph, A Modern History of the Stomach: Gastric Illness, Medicine and British Society, 1800-1950, published by Pickering and Chatto in 2011.

When I first began immersing myself in this research, it quickly became apparent that a wealth of previously unexplored material relating to stomachs and digestion was available in nineteenth- and twentieth-century medical journals, journalistic commentary, literature and social commentary as well as the extensive historic collection of medical textbooks available on the shelves of the Wellcome Library, London. This encouraged me to write an account of the history of the stomach, and the medical, scientific, technological and social discourses that historically surrounded the organ and its illnesses.

The history of gastric illness is important, in my view, because medical historians have emphasised epidemiological diseases including tuberculosis and cholera at the expense of chronic complaints that tended not to kill its victims in the past but certainly caused them years of agonising pain, disruption to day-to-day life and an inability to work. Gastric illness has always been class-neutral. Historically, it affected everyone from rich to poor. This remains the case today. Indeed, at the time of writing, gastric illness has, in recent weeks, impeded the Queen’s ability to undertake her official duties. Even Morrissey has been overheard publicly complaining of his inability to pay for the treatment of a crippling bleeding abdominal ulcer that has forced him to abandon his ongoing touring commitments. Alongside these high-profile sufferers, a countless number of individuals endure debilitating episodes of gastric discomfort. 

This blog is especially interested in recounting the various historical stories relating to the stomach. Each individual stomach has its own story to tell; its own history of health and illness; its endless cycle of digesting and processing food; its potential to succumb to illness and sickness. Stomachs also have their own historical narrative. Once, the organ was mysterious and unknown, even to physicians. However, since the late eighteenth century, the organ became increasingly subject to experimental investigation by dieticians, pathologists, surgeons, gastroenterologists - even psychologists - as medicine professionalised throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The plethora of experts who involved themselves in attempting to understand the organ and its illnesses also share their own fascinating histories. I will combine these expert accounts with the traces of historical stomach complaints recorded in autobiographies, literature and other sources in order to highlight an unusual, but significant, aspect of modern health history.

Post-Famine Food Reform in Ireland

In my second research project, undertaken at University College Dublin, I have shifted my focus to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ireland. While researching the history of the stomach, I came across various references to the overly large Irish stomach. Prior to the Famine (c.1845-52), the dietary customs of the less affluent Irish was heavily dominated by the potato. Critics of this mono-crop existence, including prominent physicians James Johnson, lamented that Irish peasants had developed abnormally large stomachs that impeded their economic performance and produced such levels of laziness that work was virtually abandoned leaving peasants with too much time on their hands to procreate and over-populate the country.

Of course, these statements were highly derogatory – practically racist by today’s standards - but it did lead me to think that an interesting historically-focused project on Irish diet could be done. So far, historians of Irish food have analysed the dramatic changes in dietary customs that followed the Famine by estimating the amount of calories that were probably ingested in past contexts, or by analysing imports and exports. As an alternative, I have looked into the socio-cultural meanings surrounding food in post-Famine Ireland and the debates which surrounded food in that period.

Rather than starting, as many historians have done, with the presumption that the Irish population naturally weaned themselves away from reliance on the potato due to having learnt lessons from the Famine, I have chosen to investigate a range of medical, scientific and expert figures and groups who sought to intervene in changing and regulating what the Irish poor ate. I have also discovered that the rhetoric surrounding post-Famine dietary conditions often focused upon strengthening Irish bodies as a means of fostering social improvement and economic productivity.

Hence, the working title of my current project is Reforming Food in Post-Famine Ireland: Medicine, Science and Improvement, c.1845-1922. Within it, I explore a wide range of topics relating to both the history of medicine and science in Ireland. My future posts will investigate connections forged between post-Famine Irish tea drinking and insanity, nationalist propaganda relating to the apparent starving of Irish schoolchildren by the British State and Sinn Féin’s efforts, during the First World War, to prove that Britain was deliberately attempting to initiate a second Famine in Ireland.

This blog is intended to communicate my ongoing research findings in the history of digestion, diet and nutrition.